Red and black mottled hard rubber are in my humble opinion one of the more beautiful materials used in the manufacture of vintage fountain pens.
As other pen makers of it's time Parker used this type of material almost since the beginning of their fountain pen production,creating some, now amazing,collectible fountain pens.
Along my 25 years collecting I was lucky to find the group of pens I'm sharing today with all of you.
From left:
#026,#023 hexagonal,#020 with a VV Parker clip,##20 and #018.
Number zero before the size number means that they are jointless models.
From left:
#28,#26,#25 with a VV Parker clip,#24 and a #10
From left:
#20,#20,#18 with a VV Parker clip,#18 with a disappearing clip and another #18
Three "turban cap top":
#20 long,#23 and #25
From left:
two unnumbered very early pens,two #1 taper cap and another #1 but straight cap
.
Comparison of the pearl black line depression Parker pen with the pearl blue line one .I even didn't know before about the existence of this color . This pen only, justify the cross of the Atlantic and all the continental US to attend the LA Pen Show 2015 !!!! To a serious pen collector this pen represents a small jewel ....independent of its commercial value which is low !!!!
As all of you know, Parker made two different sizes of depression pens . These two are also an example of the two sizes. I hope you can enjoy. Wish to all of you, crazy pen guys, a great weekend .
In 1930 and despite the Great Depression ( which begun in October 1929 )
, Waterman's had the audacity (?) to launch a luxury and expensive
model called Patrician when the other pen makers were producing low
coast pens and trying to keep themselves "above water".
The Patrician model in a Art Deco style were made with diferent attractive celluloid material and fitted with big gold nibs;
besides those characteristics they had a bigger size than the standard
for those days ( we can remember the size of the Parker Thrift time
models ) .These pens are nowadays very sough after by collectors .
In 1931 (?) on the other side of the Atlantic a British pen manufacturer
called Mentmore, launched the Platignum Supreme , a more slim and
modest pen with a steel nib but not less nice ......and, with some
similarities with the U.S. Patrician models. If we remember about the
close commercial relationships between UK and USA we should easily
understand these facts as more than a coincidence !?
In an attempt
to confirm the launching dates of both pens ( in order to understand who
influenced who ) I emailed Stephen Hull a friend pen collector and a
expert in British pens who with the characteristic British fairplay
answered me that " unfortunately" it seems that Patrician was launched
before Platignum .....
So , this Friday , before Easter , I woke up
early in the morning and shoot these photos which I'm pleased to share
with all my pen friends and all those who love pens. Hope you will
enjoy.
WATERMAN'S PATRICIAN PENS
PLATIGNUM PENS
Luiz,
I think you are off a little on the introduction date of the Patrician.
Advertising first appears in late 1929, and in Waterman's trademark
application for the name, use is claimed since April of that year.
Note
also that even after the Wall Street crash at the end of October 1929,
it was not clear for some time how things would play out. As Wikipedia
summarizes it:
"Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, optimism persisted for some time; John D. Rockefeller
said that "These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of
my life, depressions have come and gone. Prosperity has always returned
and will again." The stock market turned upward in early 1930,
returning to early 1929 levels by April. This was still almost 30% below
the peak of September 1929.
Together,
government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in
the corresponding period of the previous year. On the other hand,
consumers, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market
the previous year, cut back their expenditures by ten percent."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
